API GetUnitName
Returns the name and realm of the specified unit. name = GetUnitName(unit, showServerName) Parameters Arguments :("unit", showServerName) :;unit : String - The UnitId to query (e.g. "player", "party2", "pet", "target" etc.) :;showServerName : Boolean - If true, append " - name" to name if it's available or FOREIGN_SERVER_LABEL (" (*)" on enUS locale) if nil or false. Returns :;name : A formatted string based on the return values of UnitName(unit). Example print(GetUnitName("target")) Result Print "Bob" if Bob is your target and is on your server or "Bob - Server Name" if Bob is your target and is from a different server. NOTE: GetUnitName returns different results based upon the string passed to it. It is very important to be aware of this, especially if you are using UnitName as a variable. Example: Let's get the UnitName of a hunter that you have targeted in a battleground from Darkspear server, and the same hunter from an event caught in the combat log. --Target Bob UN = GetUnitName("target", true); print (UN); -- Result is "BobTheHunter - Darkspear" -- In event handler for COMBAT_LOG_EVENT_UNFILTERED local pattern = "_DAMAGE"; local comEvent = select(2, ...); local start = string.find(comEvent, pattern); --continue working with 'damage' if start then local damage, overkill = select(15, ...); sourceGUID, killer, killerFlag, _, destGUID, victim, vicFlag = select(4, ...); -- for example, we just killed this hunter Bob UN = GetUnitName(victim, true); print(UN); -- Result is "BobTheHunter-Darkspear" end Note the differences in strings, namely the white space. I would strongly suggest running all results from GetUnitName() through a function of some sort to ensure the results are what is expected. However, make sure this is only player names, or you will end up with 'Stormwind-Guard' for example (which is invalid, of course). Example - get unit name in the format of 'Name-Server' for your target. --check the unitGUID to get the type of unit local guid = UnitGUID(UN); local B = tonumber(guid:sub(5,5), 16); local maskedB = B % 8; -- x % 8 has the same effect as x & 0x7 on numbers <= 0xf -- strip spaces out of a player 'name - server' string if (maskedB 0) then UN = SpaceStripper(GetUnitName("target", true); -- otherwise, just use the name as returned else UN = GetUnitName("target", false); end --strip the spaces here, and return the new string function SpaceStripper(str) if str ~= nil then res=split(str, ' - '); local count = 0; for _ in pairs(res) do count = count + 1 end if (count 1) then res2 = res1; else res2 = res1..'-'..res3; if (count > 3) then for i = 4, count, 1 do res2 = res2..resi; end end end end return res2; end -- split function -- http://lua-users.org/wiki/SplitJoin function split(str, pat) local t = {} -- NOTE: use {n = 0} in Lua-5.0 local fpat = "(.-)" .. pat local last_end = 1 local s, e, cap = str:find(fpat, 1) while s do if s ~= 1 or cap ~= "" then table.insert(t,cap) end last_end = e+1 s, e, cap = str:find(fpat, last_end) end if last_end <= #str then cap = str:sub(last_end) table.insert(t, cap) end return t end Now using the above code, you will have a consistently formatted result from GetUnitName(). Details See UnitName for more details.